Fusion Of Performance Art And Social Dance

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

— Elie Wiesel

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

— Neil Gaiman

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

— C.S. Lewis

Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

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If you really want to cultivate a sense of wonder, first you need to really understand what wonder actually is. According to several dictionaries, wonder is, “a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar or inexplicable.” If we follow that definition, then it is easy to develop a sense of wonder – you just look for surprising new things you either didn’t know about before, or didn’t really understand even if you did know about them. Even the familiar can cause a person to wonder when they see it from a new perspective or angle they never did before.

If you find yourself bored with life and wishing you could get excited about something, cultivating a sense of wonder is easier than you might think, so you’re in luck. One of the easiest ways to get more curious about the world is to look at it through the eyes of a child. You were a kid once – remember? Even if you don’t, you can sort of regain that perspective which has been lost to time and age by watching kids play, or do anything at all really. Everything is exciting to a kid because it’s all new and never experienced before.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to suddenly find things like worms in clods of dirt to be wonderful. Kids are not afraid to fail, which is just part of being a kid. There’s nothing wrong with it, it just is. Another option is to read works from creative people. Authors with open minds can help readers to open their own minds with the perspectives and knowledge they share in their writing. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is an excellent book for anyone looking to expand their mind and start thinking about all the “what ifs” that exist.

These don’t need to be works of fiction either. In fact, educational texts can get the mind’s juices flowing and start you thinking about new things just as well as a favorite novel or other piece of writing. Look at your current situation in life and try to imagine some skill that would be useful to you, then educate yourself on how to do that thing. For instance, if you have a wobbly table that keeps bothering you, read about furniture and learn how to fix it. If there’s something you’ve always wanted to do, then stop waiting and start doing!

We have espoused the value of a solid routine and how repetition in dancing can lead to a better sense of discipline here. But we’ve also talked about how changing up that routine can open you up to new experiences; seeing new people and doing new things. The last tip we have is to look at your life through someone else’s eyes. This may require you to have a lengthy chat with another person, but that’s nothing to be afraid of if you genuinely care about learning how it is that other people perceive you. This exercise will almost surely point out some places where you could improve, and that’s wonderful.

Perhaps the title here is a bit misleading. A better name for this little list might be, “The Best Dances in the World for Burning Energy,” or something similar to that. That’s because each of these five dances are guaranteed to make you work up a sweat, even if you’re fit as a fiddle and in excellent shape. That’s because they’re filled with wild, exaggerated movements, acrobatics and other feats of elegance and poise. Some are sure to disagree, but here are our most energetic dances in the world.

Zumba

Zumba dancing is like a slightly better choreographed version of Crossfit. If you’ve never heard of either, the point of both is to activate as many muscle groups throughout your body over a short period of time, making you “feel the burn” from your head down to your toes. Unlike Crossfit, Zumba at least comes with decent music that makes participants more willing to get up and get down, working their arms, legs and core all at once. It’s easy to burn 500+ calories over an hour if you can keep up.

Salsa

You will doubtless find us advocating the benefits of Salsa dancing across the breadth of our website, and that’s mostly because this is a fast-paced dance that practically anyone can perform. Salsa is sensual and sexy, but more important than that, it’s a highly energetic dance that is guaranteed to get your body moving and get your heart pumping harder. All of the swaying and dipping could be a problem if you have a bad back or a poor sense of balance, so don’t just jump into Salsa.

Samba

While the previous two dances are excellent for working the entire body, the Brazilian Samba dance puts a much stronger emphasis on the legs. Specifically, most of your upper body will be straight while you work your legs, lifting a single knee at a time and really working your calves, thighs and core, including those hard to hit abs. Because there’s less movement, Samba tends to burn fewer calories, but it’s still an energetic and flashy dance that’s fun to watch.

Tango

While it does take two to tango, we would be remiss if we didn’t post at least one couple’s dance on our little list. The benefits here are easy to see – you and a partner can both encourage each other to keep going when one or the other would rather quit. Dancing Tango is kind of like going to the gym with a friend, since you get a sort of support system to fall back on. The dance is fast and furious too, and sure to make you sweat.

Hip Hop

Hip Hop dancing, also known as breakdancing, is probably the most intense out of all five dances listed here. That said, this is definitely the wrong place to start if you’re just beginning to dance and don’t have a lot of experience or fluidity of movement. This type of dancing comes with a very real possibility of injuring yourself, but there are few dances in the world more energetic than this one.

It might not seem very important, but the right kind of lighting can really make or break a dance performance. Dim the lights down too dark and nobody will be able to see the dancers on the stage; turn them up too bright those same dancers will be falling out after cooking under hot lights for a while. Studio quality lighting needs to be bright enough that everything is visible, but not so bright that is disorients or dehydrates the people performing. Believe it or not, there’s actually an easy solution for this issue that will provide studio quality lighting for less than you might expect.

We’re talking about LEDs, and specifically LED light bars, like those you can see at http://lightbarreport.com/ if you’re curious. These light strips are easy to install, easy to uninstall and move to another location, and a great energy efficient option on top of everything else. Plus, LEDs come in all kinds of wattages, so you can get mellow light if that’s what you prefer, or garishly bright light if that’s what’s called for by your specific venue. More advanced systems come with dimmer switches built in which you can use to make them brighter or darker too.

If your only experience with LEDs is bars loaded with those little dots that light up, then you don’t know just how many different kinds of LED lights exist today. You can see some examples for yourself if you’re really interested in checking out high quality light bars, but take our word for it – LED lights are some of the cheapest, most efficient and longest-lived lights that money can buy right now. The mobility is really the best part of all though. Because they’re so easy to move, LED strips can be set on one stage, then taken down to be used elsewhere, and this process can be repeated ad nauseam.

That mobility also means you can set up LED lights in places where other fixtures just wouldn’t fit. It’s easy to do away with bulky spotlights as well as most other kinds of large, unwieldy stage lighting, or at least it’s easy to do that when such a simple alternative exists. Even when dancers and other performers among us go out to put on a show, the people out of sight who are running the stage keep spare lighting as a backup in case the normal lights fail. LED lights shine at this time.

But maybe some of you have had better experiences with other kinds of lighting. We would love to hear from our readers about what it’s like being under a hot light. It’s something only stage people really know about, unless you’re talking about working out in the sun on a hot day. It could be comparable to that. There are many other stressors that affect the people who entertain us all and we will talk about some of them down the line as well. For now, try to stay cool as the weather heats up towards summer.